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The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen
Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government

By David Talbot, Harper-Collins Publisher

Reviewed by:

Eugene StovallNovember 24, 2015

Oakland, California

America was at a turning point. As it interfered more
directly and violently in the affairs of other nations, the US became more
militaristic____ a country debased by war, assassinations, government
corruption and constitutional subversion. Yet, few observers were keen enough
to predict the coup d’état that took place on November 22nd
1963.

A democratic nation like the
United States does not just turn into a fascist police state overnight. There
must have been a beginning. Bestselling author, David Talbot, in his book, The Devil’s Chessboard, says that the
American fascist police state began with Allen Dulles and the CIA’s secret
government. Talbot chronicles how Dulles and the power elite represented by the clientele
of the prestigious Wall Street law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell attacked the
American constitution and the bill of rights from deep within the bowels of the
American intelligence establishment.

On the eve of World War One,
a young Allen Dulles toured Europe on behalf of his uncle, Robert Lansing, who
was not only the former general counsel of United Fruit Company, one of
Sullivan and Cromwell’s major clients, but also currently the secretary of
state under President Woodrow Wilson. The young Dulles spied upon the growing
labor unrest and creeping bolshevism in Europe for President Wilson. By the
time the Unites States enter the “Great War,” the Secretary of State’s nephew, Allen
Dulles, had become an accomplished spy. For the next five decades, Allen Dulles
___ along with his brother, John Foster Dulles, would ply his skill in espionage
and spy craft on behalf of America’s power elite. After ‘the war to end all
wars’, Sullivan and Cromwell, the Dulles brothers’ distinguished Wall Street
law firm, backed by the power and prestige of the White House, assembled the intricate
network of international banks, investment firms, and industrial conglomerates
that handled Europe’s financial and physical reconstruction. Wall Street lent
Germany the money that was paid to France and England as war reparations. England
and France used these reparations to repay wartime loans provided made by
American banks. The Dulles brothers served array of international clients
including major German and American industrialists. Throughout the post-World
War I reconstruction period, through the stock market crash and the great
depression, the Dulles’ brothers guided their clients with an uncanny knowledge
of future events. After WWII, the Dulles brothers once again found themselves
in the position of deciding how their clients’ would earn their profits in the post-WWII
period.

At there disposal, the Dulles
had access to the billions of American tax payer’s money through the Marshall
Plan ___ monies that found their way into the corporate coffers of Dulles’
clients ____ monies that fueled the anti-communist crusade and America’s secret
government.

In his book, The Devil’s Chessboard, David Talbot
tells the entire sordid tale of how Allen Dulles created a secret government on
behalf of the power elite ___ as represented by the clients of Sullivan and
Cromwell.Dulles assisted their client’s
conduct their business corrupting, extorting, bribing, terrorizing and murdering
individuals and governments, all over the world. Talbot also claims that it was
America’s secret government that assassinated the one American powerful enough
to stand in its way.

Powerful Men Demand Their Own Secret Government

The great titans of business ___
the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Morgans, the DuPonts ___ determined US
policies in their corporate boardrooms. These men expected the White House and
Congress, willingly or unwillingly, to codify their business decisions into law.
The ‘robber barons’ engineered the stock market crash and the great depression for
geopolitical purposes. But when Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal administration
responded to the power elite’s machinations with their government takeover ___ threatening
to drastically reduce the power of big business with a rash of social and
economic reforms ___ only WWII could save them. WWII halted the government’s decline
into socialism with an uneasy alliance between America’s power elite and
Roosevelt’s New Deal government. Business ___ with its vast industrial capacity
___ gave Roosevelt’s government the wherewithal to win the world war and the
government ___ by removing laws against war profiteering ____ allowed business
to earn immense profits from war production. The government even allowed major
businesses such as Ford Motor to profit from sales to Nazi Germany during the war. Ford provided the German
army with transport vehicles as well as the engines for its dreaded Stuka dive-bomber.

After WWII, the Marshall Plan
extended the global reach of American industry and finance creating a global
empire. Marshall Plan funding helped American business corrupt officials,
assassinate political opponents and instigate regime change. America’s vast
corporate empire needed an equally vast network of spies and espionage agents
to protect the empire against threats from labor unions, socialists and
especially communists.At the behest of the secret government,
America deployed its military might ___ including nuclear weapons ___ around
the world in support of the sprawling American industrial colossus. The global deployment
of American might was justified to the American people, who were paying the
whopping billion dollar bills, as protection against the threat of international
communism. Americans gave the national security establishment free rein to
operate clandestine operations anywhere it deemed necessary. In reality,
America’s fight against communism was a defense against threats to their wealth
and stature of America’s corporate empire, real or imagined. American
capitalists would brook no competition in the international marketplace. Dulles
secret government responded to any threat to the American empire with the lethal
force of America’s military might, unfettered by civil law or moral responsibility.

The Man Who Would Be King

There was something fateful
about the unexpected meeting between an inconsequential son of a California
businessman and the seneschal for the power elite. Richard Nixon, a cunningly ambitious lawyer
who built his political career upon a far right anti-communist ideology, was
destined to serve in Allen Dulles’ secret government. In 1946, Nixon was a Navy
lieutenant assigned to a legal section in Washington. While reviewing war
documents, the young lawyer discovered that the Dulles brothers had been
laundering Nazi funds ___ counterfeit currency, silver and gold bullion ___
through the Vatican Bank. When Nixon confronted Dulles with his evidence, Dulles
“cut a deal” with the ambitious attorney. In return for the Naval officer’s
silence, the spymaster offered Nixon a membership in America’s secret government
by financing Nixon’s first political campaign against Jerry Voorhis, a four–time
democratic congressman and ardent New Dealer.

Wall Street, big oil and major
banking interests considered Jerry Voorhis “the most dangerous man in America.”
The fiery California congressman believed that the nation’s privately owned
Federal Reserve Banks had rigged the financial system in favor of the power
elite. Voorhis wanted the government to take over Federal Reserve Banks. He also
wanted to create a national credit union, large enough to compete with the big
banks.

Voorhis took on big oil. He
blocked Standard Oil’s exclusive grant from the Navy to drill oil in the Elk
Hills Naval oil reserve. He sought to eliminate the oil depletion allowance and
he prevented drilling off of the California coast. Voorhis sent shivers through
the ranks of the eastern conservative establishment by calling for the
nationalization of the transportation, energy and utility industries. He also worked
to expand the Social Security System and to establish a national minimum
income.

Most importantly, Voorhis wanted
to indict the Dulles’ brothers, John Foster and Allen, for their wartime
collusion with Nazi cartels on behalf of their corporate clients. During the
war Standard Oil and DuPont Chemical used the Dulles’ brothers as go-betweens
in their business dealings with Germany’s I.G. Farben and Krupp industries.
Voorhis investigated the Bank for International Settlement for receiving
laundered Nazi loot. Voorhis discovered that the president of the bank, Thomas
McKittrick, a close associate of Allen Dulles, was a Nazi criminal. The eastern
conservative banking establishment willingly gave Richard Nixon a “tryout,”
providing the brash newcomer unlimited financial support to rid the power elite
of their arch-enemy from California.

Richard Nixon was ready for
the big time and waged such a no-holds barred campaign for Jerry Voorhis’
congressional seat that his 1947 congressional campaign became legendary for its
accelerated level of ‘fear mongering,’ character assassination and ‘red baiting.’
Nixon characterized Jerry Voorhis as a left-wing dreamer, a communist
sympathizer, and a tool of red-dominated labor unions. Nixon told audiences
that Voorhis support for school lunch programs was evidence of his obedience to
the Communist Party line. Dulles provided Nixon with campaign workers___ illegal immigrants fleeing Europe over
the Vatican ratline to avoid prosecution as war criminals. Nixon’s campaign
workers, claiming to be refugees from communist terror, provided voters with first
hand accounts of what it was like to live under communist dictatorship.Nixon’s campaign workers made anonymous calls
to voters throughout the district, accusing Voorhis of being a communist.

“Of course I knew Jerry
Voorhis wasn’t a communist,” Nixon later admitted, “but I had to win!”

Nixon’s bare-knuckled
destruction of Jerry Voorhis carried him to the House of Representatives. As a freshman
congressman, Nixon served on the House Un-American Activities Committee,
gaining national recognition for springing the trap that got Alger Hiss
convicted for perjury. Allen Dulles could not have been more satisfied with his
protégé. Two years later, as a US senator, Nixon joined forces with Senator Joe
McCarthy, the most virulent anti-communist in Washington, assisting the alcoholic
senator from Wisconsin usher in the dread reign of terror known as “McCarthyism.”

In Richard Nixon, the power
elite found the ideal person to shift the nation’s policies sharply away from
the New Deal towards right wing extremism. Dulles used Nixon to provoke the Cold
War panic that hid the spymaster’s secret immigration of Nazi criminals into
the US. While Nixon was rooting out the ‘fake’ communist menace, Dulles
supplanted Roosevelt’s New Dealers with his die-hard fascists. So pleased was
the power elite with Nixon’s anti-communist crusade that he became their
unanimous choice for Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate in the 1952 presidential
campaign. In an all-out bid to capture the White House, Dulles funneled Nazi
loot into the Republican presidential campaign through various CIA front groups.
The spymaster also leaked secret information to the press about President Truman’s
handling of the Korean War. Both of these activities were indictable crimes
under US law. However, when the 1952 election was completed, Dulles had elected
a military hero with a secret past president and Richard Nixon, the
anti-communist crusader became vice-President of the United States.

A Communist … 100
miles away!

Fidel Castro arrived in New
York in September 1960 for the annual opening of the UN general assembly. It
was the Cuban leader’s second visit to America. On his first trip, Americans
opened their arms to the ‘freedom fighter.’ But on this visit, Castro’s
reception was as vitriolic and mean-spirited as Dulles could make it. The Eisenhower
administration did everything it could to embarrass and distress Fidel Castro
and Cuba’s UN delegation. Allen Dulles along with J. Edgar Hoover pressured
Manhattan’s four and five-star hotels to deny the fifty-member Cuban UN
delegation lodging and forbid the Cubans from leaving Manhattan and seeking
hotel facilities, elsewhere. In addition, the Eisenhower administration attempted
to confiscate the Cuban airliner that transported Fidel and his delegation to
the United States. In order to avoid seizure and save the airplane, the pilot
was immediately refuel the Cuban jet airliner and flew back to Havana, as soon
as the Cubans disembarked.

President Eisenhower was so
petty that he even refused to invite Fidel Castro to the White House reception scheduled
for Latin American leaders attending the UN opening. According to Talbot, “…
Eisenhower expressed resentment when he had to invite ‘those niggers’ … to
diplomatic receptions.”

But Castro turned white America’s
hostility into a worldwide triumph when black Americans invited the Cubans to
take up residence in Harlem’s Theresa Hotel. Incensed that blacks disrupted his
diplomatic snub, Eisenhower got the Negro congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, to pressure
the owner of the Theresa Hotel to evict Castro and the Cuban delegation.
Congressman Powell announced to the white press that Castro was not welcome in
Harlem. But Harlem’s black residents were ecstatic over the revolutionary
leader’s visit. Castro focused a spotlight on America’s ugly system of institutionalized
racism. The Cuban leader also exposed how white elites use of Negro leaders,
like Adam Clayton Powell, to keep the ‘darkies’ in their place. One of the New
York newspapers commented that Harlem’s black citizens were delighted that
Cuba’s bearded leader had “told white America to go to hell!”

After the newspaper article,
some of New York’s finest hotels offered the Cuban delegation entire floors for
free, but Castro refused to move. World leaders including Khrushchev, Nasser
and Nehru made the trek uptown to Harlem’s black ghetto in the full glare of
the TV cameras and the international press corps. Official Washington was so
thoroughly embarrassed that Allen Dulles leaked a story that the Cuban
delegation was staying in Harlem because the Theresa hotel was overrun with
hookers and prostitutes. Fidel responded to Dulles charges in his opening UN remarks,
saying: “They began spreading the news all over the world that the Cuban
delegation had lodged in a brothel. For white racists, a humble hotel in
Harlem, a hotel inhabited by black people, must be a brothel.” In reality, the CIA was the brothel, Allen
Dulles was the whoremaster ___ and Dwight Eisenhower was the ‘spook who sat by
the door.’

The American secret
government hated Castro. After taking power, the Cuban leader moved quickly to
deliver on his promises to transform Cuba from an American colony to a
sovereign nation. Castro nationalized the sugar and oil industries and
expropriated American-owned plantations, factories and utilities. The
Eisenhower administration immediately embargoed Cuban imports of sugar, tobacco
and rum. But Castro found alternative markets. Then Dulles ordered his agents
to firebomb Cuba’s sugar harvest, launching a campaign of sabotage, espionage
and terror against the Cuban people. Allen Dulles’s worse atrocity against
Cuban citizens was sailing a freighter filled with explosives into the Havana’s
harbor and blowing it up. When workers attempted to rescue the injured and
maimed dockworkers, the CIA detonated another bomb with even deadlier
consequences. But Dulles’ campaign of terror failed to dislodge Castro. Upping
the ante, Eisenhower authorized the training of a para-military force to invade
Cuba, kill Castro and overthrow the Cuban government resulting in the so-called
Bay of Pigs invasion.

“We shall not become another Guatemala,”
Castro vowed ___ referring to the ousted government of Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. To avoid Guatemala’s’
fate, Castro put right wing thugs and secret police ‘against the wall’ and purged
the armed forces of its right wing officers. Castro identified and forcibly
removed all of the CIA agents as soon as Allen Dulles inserted them onto Castro’s
island. America’s power elite could not tolerate the Cuban threat to America’s global
empire and demanded Castro’s immediate removal and with extreme prejudice.

A President Defies The Secret Government

In The Devil’s Chessboard, David Talbot recalls the incident that starts
the secret government on the road to the coup
d’état that overturned the constitution of the United States and the bill
of rights. In April 1962, President John F. Kennedy negotiated a deal between
the big steel companies and the labor unions. Kennedy wrung wage concessions from
labor so as to prevent a rise in steel prices. The Kennedy administration
feared a price hike would have an inflationary impact on the US economy. But
just four days after the steel pact was signed, US Steel chairman, Roger
Blough, announced a 3.5% price hike. US Steel’s announcement triggered similar price
increases from the other steel companies. The eastern establishment decided to
show the world that they actually controlled the United States. Henry Luce’s Newsweek declared Blough a hero for reneging
on the deal and embarrassing the president. JFK was furious.

Over the next three days, President
Kennedy used the full power of the federal government to crush the steel
rebellion. Attorney General Robert Kennedy announced a grand jury investigation
of steel price-fixing and followed up his announcement with subpoenas and FBI
raids on the headquarters of US Steel and other steel companies. Kennedy’s
Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, announced that he would review government
steel purchasing practices and favor only those companies that did not hike
their prices. Inland Steel was the first to fold. Next Bethlehem Steel said
that it would honor the “no price hike” agreement. One day later, US Steel
capitulated.

Henry Luce, a permanent
member of America’s power elite, was outraged. Luce, who was born
in China to missionary parents and who had created the first multimedia conglomerate,
envisaged the US power elite achieving worldwide domination in his time. Luce published an article in his Fortune magazine, reminding JFK of Julius Caesar’s fate. “Beware
the ides of April,” warned the publisher.

JFK offered Luce an ‘olive
branch’ by inviting the publisher to a private White House luncheon. The Times-Life
media mogul took the opportunity to lecture the president, at length, on the
dangers of communism and ended by demanding an immediate invasion of Cuba. JFK retorted
accusing the publisher of warmongering. Henry Luce stormed out of the White
House even before dessert. Luce remained President John F. Kennedy’s arch-enemy
until the day he died.

Talbot says that soon after his White House
luncheon, Luce convened a war council at his New York headquarters, declaring
that if Kennedy wasn’t bold enough to overthrow Castro, his corporation would
take on the task. Directly challenging the
president, Luce began funneling money into the CIA to finance the anti-Castro
crusade. Dulles accepted the illegal funding without the president’s approval. But
Kennedy would not back down. Just weeks before his assassination, he filed price-fixing
charges against US Steel and other steel companies. But after the Bay of Pigs
fiasco, Luce and America’s power elite, now solidly in control of the secret
government, decided to take action ___ closer to home.

The Game of Thrones

The Texas oil crowd ___ as
well as the Rockefellers ____ was furious when President Kennedy threatened
their tax loopholes. Big oil was particularly incensed over the Kennedy plan to
eliminate the oil depletion allowance, which was costing the American taxpayers
billions. Lyndon Johnson promised to protect oil interests, but LBJ was
unwelcomed in the Kennedy White House. Johnson ‘tore his britches’ with the
president when he tried to seize control of the entire intelligence and
military establishment. His attempted coup earned the vice-president, JFK’s
lasting enmity and the president intended to dropping LBJ from the ticket in
1964. Kennedy had a plausible excuse for dumping LBJ when scandals involving
LBJ closest aid Bobby Baker began surfacing in the press. Baker was reported to
be engaged in influence peddling and shaking down lobbyists on LBJ’s behalf.

Stories about Bobby Baker’s
widespread network of corruption, his campaign slush funds and his Capitol Hill
parties where call girls catered to the sexual appetites of political bigwigs
were common knowledge among Washington’s insiders. But when these stories began
appearing in the press, the vice-president suspected that Bobby Kennedy was responsible
for leaking them. However, Bobby Baker’s sex parties were a poorly kept secret.
It was also common knowledge that when Washington politicos visited Dallas and
wanted a good time, Bobby Baker took care of them at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club
___ a notorious underworld hangout.

Lyndon Johnson hated Bobby Kennedy
even more than he hated JFK. LBJ’s hatred of the Attorney General was fueled by
the younger Kennedy’s higher status in the secret government ___ a status Bobby
Kennedy achieved as the legal counsel to Joe McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Sub-Committee
on Investigations. Bobby Kennedy’s higher position in the secret government
meant that Bobby not Lyndon would likely become the Democratic Party’s 1968
presidential nominee. LBJ, a man whose ambitions were as immense as his ego was
fragile, was mortified by his fall from power. But the Kennedy brothers did not
realize how dangerous wounding Lyndon Johnson’s fragile ego could be until both
were laying in their graves.

Though not as high up in
America’s secret government, LBJ had been the godfather of the East-West
Institute located in Oahu, Hawaii. The East-West Institute was the Pacific home
for all the CIA’s Asian operations. Allen Dulles used the East-West Institute
with LBJ’s knowledge and cooperation to provoke the Korean War, overthrow the Indonesian
government and assassinate Ngo Dinh Diem,
South Vietnam’s first president. At
President-elect Kennedy’s Inaugural Ball, Clare Booth Luce teased Lyndon
Johnson about his sworn oath never to accept the vice president position even
if JFK “got down on his hands and knees.” But, according to David Talbot, the
big Texan leaned close to Henry Luce’s wife and whispered: “Clare, I looked it
up. One out of every four presidents has died in office. I’m a gamblin’ man,
darlin’, and this is the only one chance I got.”

Though LBJ lost favor with
the Kennedy administration, he retained the support of America’s secret
government. Johnson had long been the dominant political figure with the
booming aerospace and defense industries, many of which were headquartered in
Texas. Johnson kept them supplied with multi-million dollar no-bid contracts.
The vice president had long cultivated generals, admirals and top intelligence
officials. Allen Dulles knew he could depend upon the future US president from
Texas.

“The Big Event”

In October 1962, cold war tensions
came close to exploding in a nuclear conflagration during the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Every one of JFK’s national security advisers urged the president to
take the aggressive action calculated to trigger a nuclear war. As the world
held its breath, President Kennedy supported only by his brother, Bobby, and
Robert McNamara, worked with the Soviet premiere, Nikita Khrushchev, to step
back a nuclear holocaust. Kennedy removed obsolete Jupiter missiles from Turkey
in exchange for Khrushchev removing missiles from Cuba.

America’s military and
intelligence establishment were furious. They believed the Cuban Missile Crisis
gave the US the ideal opportunity to launch a full-scale military invasion and
knock out the Castro regime, once and for all. Kennedy’s peaceful resolution of
the crisis left the right wing cold warriors bitterly resentful. And by early 1963,
Kennedy was seeking to defuse Cuba as an international flashpoint.He withdrew funding from anti-Castro militant
groups and cracked down on raids against the Cuban island. At this point Allen
Dulles told the rabid-CIA sponsored Cuban “freedom fighters” that he was
de-escalating the US campaign against Havana and redirecting their activities. The
spymaster then turned his violent anti-Castro network of spooks, extremists,
mercenaries and assassins inward. Dulles changed his plots to remove the
president of Cuba, into a plot to assassinate the President John F. Kennedy and
stage a coup d’état against the US constitution and the bill of rights.

On November 2, 1963, the
Secret Service uncovered an assassination plot against President Kennedy. After
landing at O’Hare Airport, President Kennedy was to ride in a motorcade to
Soldier Field for the Army-Navy game. The Secret Service cancelled the
motorcade when they discovered that assassins planned to ambush the president
from a tall warehouse building as his limousine slowed down for a hairpin
curve. The plot involved a sniper team composed of a disgruntled ex-Marine who
worked in the building and Cuban marksmen. The identical plan was carried out
in Dallas on November 22nd, just twenty days later.

The consensus within the
American power elite was that President John F. Kenney was a national security
threat. The good of the country required that the secret government remove
Kennedy from office. The power elite turned to Allen Dulles, the man with the stature,
connections and will to make it happen. Dulles had a killing machine that
operated overseas. According to David Talbot, Allen Dulles inserted his killers
into Dealey Plaza, murdered JFK and used his secret government to institute the
coup d’état that removed the Bill of
Rights and turned the United States into a fascist police state.

Shoot ‘em In The Head

CSNBC’s Chris Matthews
interviewed the controversial former governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, on
November 5, 2015 about the closing of Guantanamo Bay. “What can we do with the
prisoners,” Matthews asked the politician whose sexual escapades lost him his
governorship. “We have kept some of them locked up for over ten years. The
government says that we don’t have enough evidence to take the to court, but we
can’t just let them go. What should we do?”

“We have a tradition in this
country of taking people out the back door of jails,” Mark Sanford replied.
“Some we shoot in the back of the head, others we let go.”

Mark Sanford gives an
accurate description of how the American secret government operates. Currently
a congressman from South Carolina, Mark Sanford confirms exactly what David
Talbot describes in his book, The Devil’s
Chessboard. America’s secret government shot both the president of the
United States and his brother in their heads.

But there is no statute of
limitations on murder and until the Kennedys’ assassins are brought to justice,
the world will find no peace.